The Internet has evolved from an obscure network interconnecting various Department of Defense installations, to a network for universities to share information, and on to the global publicly accessible network that it has become. As it has evolved so have the services that are provided using its interconnected structure of computer systems, network links, and routers.
Of these services, Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP has emerged as a current and future competitor of traditional circuit switched telephone networks. VoIP found early acceptance in enterprise environments where VoIP allows for the installation costs associated with building both a circuit based telephony infrastructure and a data infrastructure to be avoided. Using VoIP businesses can instead choose to use an IP based network to transfer both voice and data.
In many instances, the cost of service can be substantially less than paying for traditional business telephony service. VoIP can provide the advanced features of a traditional business telephone network, such as call transferring, call forwarding, voice mail, caller ID, and conferencing abilities, among others, many times at a lower cost than similar circuit switched based alternatives.
Residential VoIP is currently available as well and is gaining prevalence as a telephone access alternative for customers that have a broadband internet connection.
As the VoIP user base grows, the network bandwidth consumed transporting VoIP calls will increase. The more prevalent VoIP becomes, the importance of ensuring that VoIP calls are structured to maximize bandwidth efficiency grows. This is needed in order to prevent network congestion, ensure quality of service, and realize the cost benefits of VoIP now and in the future.
Current methods and systems of providing conferencing services via VoIP can often result in wasted bandwidth in the form of transmitting redundant data between infrastructure elements.